The first 5 hours of JC2 felt fresh and new (i'd never played the first one), then i realized how much stuff there was to collect. I did maybe one agency mission and then went straight into clearing out every city and base there was to blow up. about 50 hours later, i had done most of all there was to do and then finally decided to do my agency missions. Since i had generated so much chaos, there was no break in between missions. I pretty much beat the main story in about an hour and was left very, very disappointed.  Spending hours jumping in and out of military bases trying to find every last collectible just made me feel sick once i was finished. Maybe i should have played more casually and continued the story while i generated chaos. Thats exactly what i did with Red Faction Guerilla, and i loved it. Maybe i took on JC2 with way to much enthusiasm.

The first 5 hours of JC2 felt fresh and new (i'd never played the first one), then i realized how much stuff there was to collect. I did maybe one agency mission and then went straight into clearing out every city and base there was to blow up. about 50 hours later, i had done most of all there was to do and then finally decided to do my agency missions. Since i had generated so much chaos, there was no break in between missions. I pretty much beat the main story in about an hour and was left very, very disappointed.  Spending hours jumping in and out of military bases trying to find every last collectible just made me feel sick once i was finished. Maybe i should have played more casually and continued the story while i generated chaos. Thats exactly what i did with Red Faction Guerilla, and i loved it. Maybe i took on JC2 with way to much enthusiasm.

That's exactly what I did in my playthrough, brief as it may have been, before it was back to GameFly for this one. I got really tired of collecting those stupid little crates all the time. I could of just stopped, but I have a completionist problem...

Indeed - I started clearing towns, collecting crates and faction items to get the achievements, but even now that I have them all its so damned tempting to just drop into any town I pass and clean it out.  I am breaking that up with some faction missions at the moment, which are a welcome change of pace. I really should continue the actual story though.

I played it very similarly too, didn't bother me tho.
I play it more for the area cleaning and collecting than the (ultra-weak) campaign anyways.

" The first 5 hours of JC2 felt fresh and new (i'd never played the first one), then i realized how much stuff there was to collect. I did maybe one agency mission and then went straight into clearing out every city and base there was to blow up. about 50 hours later, i had done most of all there was to do and then finally decided to do my agency missions. Since i had generated so much chaos, there was no break in between missions. I pretty much beat the main story in about an hour and was left very, very disappointed.  Spending hours jumping in and out of military bases trying to find every last collectible just made me feel sick once i was finished. Maybe i should have played more casually and continued the story while i generated chaos. Thats exactly what i did with Red Faction Guerilla, and i loved it. Maybe i took on JC2 with way to much enthusiasm. "

I just feel the urge to clear entire islands - races, towns, faction items.  The desert was the first zone I cleared fully, but man it can take ages even when you limit yourself to a given island to cut down on travel time.  I just can't leave a stone unturned...